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Gaslight (1940 film)

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1940 British film by Thorold Dickinson For other uses, see Gaslight (disambiguation).

Gaslight
Pre-release poster for trade showing
Directed byThorold Dickinson
Written by
Based onGas Light
1938 play
by Patrick Hamilton
Produced byJohn Corfield
Starring
CinematographyBernard Knowles
Edited bySidney Cole
Music byRichard Addinsell
Production
company		British National Films
Distributed byAnglo-American Film Corp. (United Kingdom)
Release date
  • 25 June 1940 (1940-06-25) (United Kingdom)
Running time89 minutes
CountryUnited Kingdom
LanguageEnglish

Gaslight (released in the United States as Angel Street) is a 1940 British psychological thriller directed by Thorold Dickinson starring Anton Walbrook and Diana Wynyard, and features Frank Pettingell. The film adheres more closely to the original play upon which it is based – Patrick Hamilton's Gas Light (1938) – than does the 1944 MGM remake. The play had been performed on Broadway as Angel Street, so when the MGM remake was released in the United States, it was given the same title as the American production.

Plot

In Pimlico, London, Alice Barlow (Marie Wright) is murdered by an unknown man, who then ransacks her house, ripping her furniture apart as if desperately searching for something. The house remains empty for many years, until newlyweds Paul and Bella Mallen move in. Bella (Diana Wynyard) soon finds herself misplacing small objects; and, before long, Paul (Anton Walbrook) has her believing she is losing her sanity. B. G. Rough (Frank Pettingell), a former detective involved in the original murder investigation, begins to suspect Paul of Alice Barlow's murder.

Paul lights the gas lamps to search the closed-off upper floors, which causes the rest of the lamps in the house to dim slightly. When Bella comments on the lights' dimming, he tells her that she is imagining things. Bella is persuaded that she is hearing noises, unaware that Paul enters the upper floors from the house next door. The sinister interpretation of the change in light levels is part of a larger pattern of deception to which Paul subjects Bella, including berating her for losing a brooch, which he had hidden inside his locked rolltop desk.

Rough gets wind of Paul's plan to have Bella certified insane and institutionalised so that he can carry on with Nancy, their promiscuous maid, and summons Bella's concerned cousin Vincent Ullswater for help in getting her out of Paul's grasp. After Paul verbally abuses Bella before leaving to attend a music hall show with Nancy, Rough comes to the house and reveals to Bella that Paul is really the wanted Louis Bauer, who has returned to the house to search for the rubies he was unable to find after murdering his aunt, Alice Barlow. Furthermore, due to Bauer's bigamous marriage to another woman in Australia, his marriage to Bella is invalid. Rough forces open Paul's desk in search of evidence that Paul is Bauer, but is interrupted when Bella sees the gaslight flicker shortly before Bauer returns to the house. Rough confronts him with their knowledge and Bauer mockingly opens the desk drawer which he is confident contains no evidence. Inside is Bella's missing brooch, and she reveals that the brooch has a secret compartment in which the rubies had been hidden. When the brooch is opened Alice Barlow's initials can be seen inside. Bella also tells Rough that she hid the rubies inside a vase on the mantelpiece. The cornered Bauer attacks them both with a chair, but is knocked unconscious by Rough. Bauer attempts to coerce Bella into freeing him from his restraints, but she denounces him at knifepoint before he is led away by the police.

Cast

Reception

Rotten Tomatoes tallied a 100% score, based on six professional reviews.

Leonard Maltin gave the film 3+1⁄2 stars (out of 4): "Electrifying atmosphere, delicious performances, and a succinctly conveyed sense of madness, and evil lurking beneath the surface of the ordinary".

The Time Out critic wrote, "Nothing like as lavish as the later MGM version ... But in its own small-scale way a superior film by far. Lurking menace hangs in the air like a fog, the atmosphere is electric, and Wynyard suffers exquisitely as she struggles to keep dementia at bay."

Encouraged by the success of the play and film, MGM bought the remake rights, but with a clause insisting that all existing prints of Dickinson's version be destroyed, even to the point of trying to destroy the negative, so that it would not compete with their more highly publicised 1944 remake starring Charles Boyer, Ingrid Bergman, and Joseph Cotten. "Fortunately they failed, and now the British film has been restored by the BFI and issued in the UK on Blu-ray in a pristine print." Since 2017 the film has been viewable on the YouTube platform.

Denominalisation of the play's title

Self-help and popular psychology authors sometimes denominalise the film's title (also known as "verbing") and use it as a verb ("gaslighting"). Gaslighting, in this context, refers to manipulating a person or a group of people, in a way similar to the way the protagonist in the play was manipulated.

References

Citations

  1. "Gaslight (1940)". BBFC. Retrieved 8 March 2014.
  2. League, The Broadway. "Angel Street – Broadway Show". IMDb.com. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
  3. "Gaslight". RottenTomatoes.com. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
  4. "Gaslight (1940) – Overview". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
  5. "Gaslight". Time Out. Retrieved 30 July 2016.
  6. Brown, Geoff. "Dickinson, Thorold (1903–1984)". BFI Screenonline. Retrieved 22 April 2014.
  7. Fristoe, Roger. "Gaslight (1940)". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on 1 February 2013.
  8. Horne, Philip (4 October 2008). "Thorold Dickinson's 1949 film The Queen of Spades has been called 'a masterpiece' by Martin Scorsese – so why is his work not better known?". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 30 May 2009.
  9. "Gaslight (1940 and 1944)". Wordpress.com. 17 April 2015. Retrieved 28 January 2018.
  10. "Gaslight (1940)". YouTube. 1 September 2017. Retrieved 8 March 2021.
  11. DiGiulio, Sarah. "What is gaslighting? And how do you know if it's happening to you?". NBC News. Retrieved 8 July 2024.

General and cited references

  • Vermilye, Jerry (1978). The Great British Films. Secaucus, NJ: Citadel Press. pp. 52–54. ISBN 978-0-8065-0661-6.

External links

Films directed by Thorold Dickinson
Patrick Hamilton's Gas Light
Plays
Films
TV
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